


The Ruin That Names Us

by 2012bookworm



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Character Death, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-18 09:28:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11871426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2012bookworm/pseuds/2012bookworm
Summary: “What happened?”  Will asked, breathing hard and feeling something shivery start to steal over his limbs.   “What happened?”





	The Ruin That Names Us

**Author's Note:**

> TW: Death by suicide of a main character. This is not a happy story. Please be careful with yourselves. See end notes for details.

Will ducked out of the side door of the computer science building and felt his headache start to ease. Three-hour midterms were the _worst_ , especially when he spent the time staring at a computer screen in a windowless room under fluorescent lights. He turned his phone back on and rolled his eyes as it started immediately buzzing with text notifications. He wondered what people were arguing about on the group chat _now_. This morning it had been the importance of Alfred to Batman’s storyline, which had expanded to include the importance of butlers whenever they appeared in media, brought on by Shitty and Jack’s new obsession with Downton Abbey. (Jack liked the historical setting; Shitty liked the “exploration of socio-economic hierarchy”; Holster liked to remind them they were way behind the times.) Will glanced down and frowned when he saw that he also had several missed calls from Chowder, with voicemails. He clicked on the first one.

 

“Hey Dex, call me back when you get this, ok?”

 

The message sounded normal enough, but something about Chowder’s voice was off. Will started walking faster and listened to the next message.

 

“Dex, pick up. Please.” Chowder sounded frantic. Will tried not to panic.

 

There was one more message, from less than five minutes ago.

 

“I forgot you were in an exam. Dex –“ Chowder’s voice broke. “Just get to the Haus. Soon as you can.”

 

Will started to run, his mind churning through possibilities. Had Chowder and Farmer broken up? It sounded more serious than that, somehow. Was someone hurt? Who? Couldn’t be Chowder. Bitty? Ollie or Wicks? _Nursey_?

 

He skidded to a stop on the front porch, panting, not completely sure how he’d gotten there, flung open the door, and rushed into the kitchen, where he stopped short at the sight of Bitty sobbing into his hands, Ford petting his hair while talking in to her phone, face too solemn, too still, and Nursey, a shivering ball on the floor with Chowder wrapped around him, tears running down both their faces.

 

“What happened?” Will asked, breathing hard and feeling something shivery start to steal over his limbs.   “ _What happened_?”

 

Ford looks up at him, and something softens in her expression, until he catches a brief flash of sympathy, or maybe just pity. “Hey, Lardo?” She murmurs into the phone. “I’m still here, I just… Dex just walked in, so I’m gonna put the phone down, just for a sec, ok sweetie?”

 

Will blinks at her, the part of his brain screaming _wrong, wrong, wrong, bad_ getting louder. No one, not ever, has called Lardo a pet name, not even Shitty, not even _Bitty_ , and the tone Ford’s using is the one he heard when she was trying to soothe Tango after he broke his wrist.

 

“No, no.” Ford continues, “I’m not gonna hang up. Don’t worry. I’m here. Just… one second, ok?” She puts the phone against her chest, tries to smile, doesn’t manage it. “Dex. Shitty…. Shitty’s dead.”

 

Will feels his knees give out, starts to stagger, manages to catch the doorframe before he falls. He knows now how Nursey and Chowder ended up on the floor. “What? How? He can’t… what?”

 

“He…” Her mouth trembles, and she closes her eyes, swallows. “He didn’t come home last night. Lardo didn’t worry about it, figured he stayed at the library, he was still commenting in the chat and stuff, but then he didn’t show up for lunch, and wouldn’t answer his phone, and…they called her when they found the body.”

 

“When they…” He knows he’s getting louder, tries to calm down, not yell at her. “What _happened_?”

 

She looks at him, and he can feel the way he’s still panting, breath throwing itself in and out of his chest, and it can’t be, it can’t, there’s no _way_ – “They found him hanging in the park.”

 

“ _No_.” He says, and it’s part disbelief, part denial.

 

“I’m sorry.” She says, and watches him, just for a moment, before she brings her phone back up to her ear. “Lardo? I’m back. No, no, don’t be sorry, I’m here as long as you need me…”

 

Will sinks down on the floor, numb, trying to understand what Ford just told him, trying to find a way for it to not be true, clenching his hands on his shins. _Oh my god_ , he thinks, _how did we not…_ and _poor Lardo_ , and _why didn’t he talk to us?_ He’s not sure how long it is before he manages to lift his head, but Ford’s still on the phone and everyone else is still crying so it can’t have been too long. _Lardo’s alone_ , he thinks, _that’s bad_. She and Shitty and Jack…. And Jack, fuck, does Jack know? Should they tell him?

 

His voice comes out rusty. “Has anyone called Jack?”

 

Ford shakes her head. Bitty sits up just enough that Will can see his red-rimmed eyes, the tear streaks on his face. “No. It…it should be me, and I…I can’t yet.”

 

A sob escapes almost as soon as he finishes speaking, wobbly and wet, and he drops his face back into his hands. Ford starts petting his hair again. The look she gives Will is a little desperate, and he notices, detached, the way her fingers are clenched around the phone and her lips are grey from being pressed together so hard. He forces himself up, because he thinks he may be the only one, at the moment, who can, and gives her a small nod. He feels funny, detached, still weirdly numb, but now he’s holding on to that feeling as hard as he can, if it means he can help Ford, help Bitty.

 

“I’ll call.” He says. “Bits, I’ll call him.”

 

He walks out into the hall on stiff legs, pulls his phone out of his pocket, wonders for a moment how it got back in there. Then he takes a deep breath and calls Jack. It rings, and rings, and Will’s about to hang up and try again when the call finally connects.

 

“ _Crisse_.” He hears Jack mutter. “ _Salut_ , uh, hi, Dex. Sorry, couldn’t find my phone. Er… what’s up?”

 

He sounds confused, and Dex gets it, it’s not like they really call each other. “Jack? Where are you right now?”

 

“Umm….” Now he sounds confused and worried. “Home? In Providence? Is something wrong?”

 

“Shitty.” Will blurts out. “Jack, I’m so sorry, but Shitty’s – he’s dead.”

 

There’s silence on the other end of the line. Will breathes into it, waiting, not sure what else to do or say.

 

“What?” He hears, faint and barely audible, and then a shuddering breath, too fast and shaky to mean anything good.

 

“Hey, hey,” Will says, trying to copy Ford’s soothing tone, not let the grief and panic come out in his voice. “Breath with me, ok? In, two three four, hold, two three four, out two three four.”

 

He hears Jack trying to follow, tries to focus on nothing but breathing, ignore the quiet sobs he can halfway hear from the kitchen. It takes a while, but Jack’s breaths get calmer, slower.

 

“What – what happened?” He finally asks, his voice breaking halfway through.

 

Will shakes his head. “You – you don’t wanna know. It – it’s bad.”

 

Jack gets it, almost instantly, and Will remembers that he was once found half-dead on a bathroom floor. “Pills? Or – or something else? Lardo – “ He clears his throat. “Please tell me Lardo didn’t find him.”

 

Will closes his eyes, because he hadn’t realized this could be, somehow, _worse_. “No – no. He was – hanging – in a park.”

 

“Oh, Shits.” Jack says, pain and grief and ache clear in his voice. “I’ll – Could I come up there? – I don’t –“

 

He stops. Will fills in the rest for him. _I don’t want to be alone_. “Yeah. Yeah, of course. Just – get someone else to drive you?”

 

“I’ll call Tater.” Jack promises, and hangs up. Will takes a deep, shuddering breath and ignores the part of him inside that is shaking to pieces. He doesn’t know if he’s allowed to fall apart, not yet. He goes back in to the kitchen.

 

“Jack’s on his way.” He says. Bitty melts a little lower, in relief or maybe sorrow, Will isn’t sure. Chowder and Nursey, still on the floor, don’t react, but Ford gives him a small, grateful smile. “Do Ransom and Holster….?”

 

Ford nods, mouths. “They’re with Lardo.”

 

Will’s shoulders slump. He tries to rally. “The rest of the team?”

 

“Ollie and Wicks are telling them.” Chowder croaks from the floor, pulling his head out of Nursey’s shoulder.

 

Now it’s Will’s turn to nod. He looks around, searching, trying desperately to think if there’s anything else that needs to be done, or if he can go and hide on his bunk and cry. Chowder and Nursey are still wrapped around each other, but they’ve stopped weeping, and Chowder frowns up at him, reaches out, snags his pant leg, and tugs until he collapses next to them. Nursey burrows into his chest almost immediately while Chowder leans against his side and Will, reluctantly, quits pushing everything away. The first sob takes him by surprise, but Chowder and Nursey just snuggle closer, and he lets himself cry for a boy who seemed too full of life for them to ever lose.

 

***

 

Jack gets there in less than an hour. The three of them are still huddled together on the floor, though they’ve moved so their backs are against the cabinets. Everyone’s quit crying, mostly, but no one’s talking, and they keep avoiding each other’s eyes. Ford makes them drink glasses of water. The door bangs open and everyone flinches, but it’s just Jack, looking like he’s holding on by his fingernails, composure cracking, and Bitty all but throws himself into his arms.

 

“Wait, Zimmboni –“ Tater yells, lurching in a moment later, just as Jack – Jack – starts sobbing into Bitty’s hair.

 

Tater stops, goes quiet. Will feels a distant horror, to see Jack – hockey robot, shows care by doing Jack – all but shake apart with the force of his quiet, desperate tears. Bitty’s murmuring something indistinct and rubbing his back, slow, gentle circles while Tater looks on. This is probably freaking him out just as much, if not more, as it does Will. Tater, after all, didn’t know Shitty, didn’t spend every Thursday discussing current events over coffee, or help prank the lax bros, or –

 

Will swallows down a fresh wave of tears and disentangles himself from Nursey, pressing a brief kiss on his head as he does. He’s sure Chowder notices but he’s past the point of caring. He manages to get up and go to Tater. “Hey, man. Thanks for driving him.”

 

“Of course. Zimmboni a friend. But –” He jerks helplessly forward at a loud cry from Jack. “He not tell me what’s wrong?”

 

Will closes his eyes, breaths. It hurts every time he has to say it. “A…a friend of ours, um, Shitty? Don’t know if you ever met him, he, uh, he… well, he’s dead.”

 

Tater jerks around to stare at him, taking his eyes off Jack for the first time. “This is lawyer Shitty? Zimmboni’s best friend? _Ебать_.”

 

“Yeah. It’s…not good.” Will tries, unsure of what else to say. He glances over at Ford, who’s moved to fill another glass with water, the only one of them whose face is still dry. He resolves to check on her later, when his limbs don’t feel so heavy. Jack seems to be crying himself out, the sobs turning into hiccups. Ford manages to usher him into a chair, using the same brisk efficiency she does on tired hockey players running late for the bus. He pulls Bitty down with him, into his lap. Ford puts the glass down on the table nearby, and sits again. Jack’s face has moved to Bitty’s shoulder, and the hiccups have turned back in to tears.

 

Tater sighs. “I call Georgia. Tell her Jack not at practice tomorrow.”

 

“No.” Will says, tired. “I don’t – I don’t think any of us will be.”

 

***

 

Eventually, Tater and Ford herd them all in to the living room. Tater rummages around in the fridge and comes back with a case of beer that he puts on the floor. Ollie and Wicks come in and go straight to the attic, lacking their usual matching grins. The rest of the team wanders over, in two and threes. Some stay. Some don’t. Will’s never known the Haus to be this quiet, something solemn and gloomy hanging in the air that muffles the usual homey creaks. Will’s keeping an eye on Nursey, made easier by the way he’s tucked against Will’s side on the couch, but he only drinks two beers. Will nurses his one and wishes for something stronger. Grief, he feels, should be chased with cheap whiskey, something that burns. Beer, he’s sure, isn’t going to be strong enough to numb the fact that one of their own is dead, that they didn’t even know he was hurting. They make a few desultory attempts at conversation. Tater leaves, reluctant, but he’s got practice in the morning, and the rest of the team follows soon after, until the only people left are the Haus residents and Jack.

 

It’s Nursey, quiet all day, who finally says what they’ve been trying not to think. “I can’t – I can’t believe he would do this.”

 

They all shift uncomfortably. Chowder, after an exchange of glances, is the one who speaks up. “Well, mental health issues –“

 

“No.” Nursey interrupts. “I get it, I’ve read the rhetoric too, you know, and abstractly it makes sense, but right now _I don’t care_. He could have talked to us! Any of us! We were here, we would have listened, we –” His voice breaks.

 

Jack tries this time, low. “It can be hard to ask for help, sometimes.”

 

“Sure, fine, but you can’t tell me that Shitty – my Shitty – didn’t find out about your overdose and immediately tell you to call him if things ever got that bad again.” Nursey takes in a shuddering breath. “He did, didn’t he?”

 

Jack looks away. Bitty squeezes his hand where it’s resting on his thigh. “Yeah, he did. After hugging me for a solid minute.”

 

“He did the same thing for me when I was fourteen.” Nursey says, and Will’s heart stops, the arm around Nursey’s shoulder pulling him in tighter. He didn’t know, wants to ask, but he can’t, he can’t, not right now. “So he knew – _he knew_ – we’d understand.” Nursey’s voice gets louder and more desperate. “Didn’t he? So why? Why would he do this? To us, to Lardo, to – to everyone? I don’t – why? I just want to know why.”

 

His voice breaks. None of them have an answer.

 

***

 

That night, Will crawls into bed with Nursey without either of them saying a word. They’ve been hooking up since the start of the season in October, after their first roadie, when adrenaline filled wrestling turned into something more, but just sharing a bed is new. Tonight though – tonight they both need all the comfort they can get, that a familiar warm body can provide. So they curl up together, clutching each other close, and when Nursey nudges his nose against Will’s chin, a subtle question, Will ducks down and kisses him, meaning it to be soft and comforting, even if that’s not something they normally do, but Nursey grabs his face and deepens it, turns it desperate and wanting, and Will responds, that shaking part of himself coming to the forefront. He rolls, careful on the small bed, until he’s on top and can grind down, press bruises into Nursey’s biceps, his hips, feel skin under his hands, lay claim to the breathing body beneath him, that is here and alive and safe. Nursey, in turn, puts a hand in Will’s hair, grips, pulls him back down when he breaks away to breath, nips at his lips, wraps a leg around the back of his thighs to press him closer, thrusts up on a moan.

 

It’s quick and hard and they stay mostly dressed and afterwards, the high dissipating into the hollow feeling Will’s had since he heard the news, Nursey starts whispering into the space between them, telling him, too casual, too flat, about freshman year at Andover and how much it had sucked and how alone he had felt and how Shitty had dragged him out of some hockey party he barely remembers and he’d apparently cried all over him and confessed to the pocket knife he kept in his bedside table drawer, just in case.

 

“I woke up in my own bed with Shitty sitting at my desk, staring at me, with my first fucking hangover, so _confused_ and he just gave me ibuprofen and water and then dragged me to breakfast. I barely knew the guy, and he’s sitting me down and asking me how much I remember from last night, do I need to talk to anyone, if I do he’s there, all painfully earnest and so awkward, and I was mortified, but he was trying, you know, and he started searching me out, sitting with me at meals and talking to me in the locker room and it got better. Like he said it would. He told me later he’d spent all night doing frantic research on his phone to figure out what to do.” Nursey pauses, takes a shuddering breath. “I always told myself if anything happened, I’d do the same for him. And I – I didn’t know. Didn’t see.”

 

“None of us did.” Will whispers back, running a hand up and down Nursey’s side.

 

“I know.” Will feels Nursey shiver. “Can’t decide if that makes it worse or not.”

 

***

 

The next morning, they wander down to the kitchen all bleary-eyed and still too quiet. Bitty’s making biscuits, his own personal comfort food. The bags under Jack’s eyes are back, and he’s staring into his coffee like it’s the abyss. Every time Bitty passes, one or the other of them reaches out to touch, just quick brushes, a sort of physical check-in. Farmer must have come by after her game last night, because she’s leaning her head on Chowder’s shoulder and yawning. C, normally a disgustingly bright morning person, is too still. Nursey slumps down next to Caitlin, who reaches over and rubs his shoulder. Will gets the bacon out of the fridge, his comfort food and the only thing, other than mac and cheese, he could make when he first came to Samwell. Bitty hands him a cup of coffee and puts another one in front of Nursey. It’s dark, and bitter, and good, and Will can tell Jack made it. Bitty doesn’t like black coffee well enough to brew a good cup. They don’t talk, any of them, and while mornings in the kitchen can be quiet, they’re not like this, no pop music playing, no one chirping Nursey about his bedhead or Chowder about Farmer sneaking in. After a few minutes of crackling bacon and Bitty’s rolling pin being the only sounds, Will snaps.

 

“How was the game, Farmer?” He asks.

 

She looks at him, in confusion and with some disbelief, and he gives her a pleading look in return. She nods, just slightly, and he breathes out in relief. He’s always liked Farmer. “Uh, it was good. We almost went into overtime, but then April – you’ve met April, right? – hit this wicked spike over the net.”

 

“Good.” He casts around for something, anything, else to talk about. “Jack, how are the Falconer’s looking this year?”

 

Jack startles. “Um, decent? We’ve got a good team, and we’re hoping to build off of last year’s success.”

 

It’s a press answer, but it’ll work. Bitty glances at him, eyes narrowed, until they widen in sudden comprehension. “Dex, honey, how’d your midterm go?”

 

Dex cheers internally. Now that Bitty’s on his side, things will be so much easier. Bitty’s good at making conversation. “Fine? I think? There’s just a point where everything starts to look like gibberish no matter what.”

 

“That’s because it is gibberish.” Nursey mutters.

 

“Your poetry is worse.” Will retorts.

 

Nursey glares at him. “Just because you’re too much of a stoic to appreciate the raw emotion present in the best poetic forms…”

 

Battle is happily begun. Will, out of the corner of his eye, sees Jack’s small smile. By the time the biscuits are ready he’s cooked almost the entire pack of bacon and the kitchen feels more normal. There’s still something off, something hovering in the background, but they can forget it, just for a little while. It’s no more than a single breath of air in a stormy sea, but sometimes that’s all you need not to drown.

 

***

 

The funeral is four days later. Things aren’t better, not really, and Will has yet to spend a night in his own bed. He throws himself into practice, and class, and fixing the Haus, and tries to avoid thinking about Shitty. It’s hard when he catches glimpses of the bylaws behind the water heater, or when the light comes through Faber just right, or when he reads something and thinks _I’d like to talk to Shitty about that_ before remembering all over again that he can’t. Still, there are more and more moments of breath before the waves come crashing down again, and he’s vaguely hopeful that the funeral will help somehow, give them closure or even just release.

 

The coaches, after a conversation with Bitty, backed up by Ford, cancel practice for the day. The whole team takes the train to Boston, wearing their best, most somber suits. Bitty has to borrow one of Ollie’s ties, his collection of bowties too bright for funeral wear. Will ties it for him, his fingers too clumsy to figure out the different knot. Ransom, Holster, Lardo, and Jack meet them outside the church. No one yells a greeting. Usually, Will rolls his eyes at the over exuberant hellos, but now he’s wishing for Holster to try and tackle someone, instead of looking subdued and small. Lardo’s in all black, which shouldn’t be strange because most of Lardo’s clothes are black or purple, but is, somehow. She looks better than Will expected, but then she’s always been good at hiding her hurts. Ford goes up and hugs her. Bitty does the same to Jack, only hesitating a moment to decide if it’s ok. Will hates that even here, even now, they have to try and hide. Ransom’s standing close enough to Holster that their shoulders brush, close enough that they can lean on each other, and Will sees him slip a careful hand around Holster’s back.

 

There are brief, quiet greetings before all of them file inside, and there is no chirping, no yelling, none of the usual chaos and good-natured mayhem they tend to leave in their wake. Instead, it’s as if everyone is terrified of doing or saying the wrong thing, and Will registers the people openly staring at them, at this group of boys in procession, led by two young women, one whose spine is rigid only through the sheer force of her will, the other there in case that will collapsed.

 

When they sit down, Will hears whispering, and it’s not from anyone on the team. He refuses to look around, see what it is these people, law grads and Shitty’s relatives, think of them. It doesn’t matter, now, if they approve or not.

 

A man Will vaguely recognizes as Shitty’s father is the first to speak, the quiet hush of the chapel turning perfectly silent when he stands and walks to the lectern. He clears his throat. “My son was a remarkable young man. A college double major and Harvard law student, his drive to succeed was formidable. We regret, deeply, his wasted potential in leaving us so young….”

 

He keeps talking, and the picture he paints of Shitty – quiet, studious – feels wrong. He never mentions suicide, which Will expected, because none of them having been saying it either, not even in their heads. He never mentions hockey, either, which is maybe why everything feels so off, as if the person he’s describing is a stranger rather than Will’s friend. He knew Shitty’s parents thought of hockey as just an odd extra-curricular that would look good on applications, but he didn’t think they’d erase it from his life. Maybe it’s not deliberate, maybe they just didn’t know their son, but no one on the team had been invited to speak, not even Lardo, who was living with him when he died, whose name was listed as his emergency contact, and there’s something almost cruel about that, that the most important person in Shitty’s life sits quiet as those who don’t know him try to praise what little they thought was good. When Shitty’s grandfather says something about his “mild temper” Will hears a muffled snort of disbelief, the first real sound anyone on the team has made, and glances around to see everyone stone-faced, dry-eyed, and wants, hysterically, to laugh.

 

He walks out after the final prayer feeling restless and unsatisfied. The actual burial is family only, and it’s more than obvious they don’t count. Will’s angry about that, distantly, but he’s having trouble summoning up any kind of emotion. Nursey, next to him, mutters that they’d missed all the best things. Chowder, mournful, concurs.

 

“They wanted to reclaim him. Make him who they always wanted when he wasn’t around to argue anymore.” Jack says, looking tired as he says it. Bitty moves in a little closer, trying to be supportive. Holster makes an unhappy noise. Lardo just stays looking blank, and Will can’t tell if it’s a mask or exhaustion. Everyone is still quiet, but now it’s a restless, unhappy, almost angry sort of quiet.

They stand in front of the church, unsure of what to do next, and unexpectedly, it’s Whiskey who speaks up. “Poindexter, you know how to throw an Irish wake?”

 

Will opens his mouth to say no, that isn’t what they need, that they’re tired and sad and the last thing they need is a party, but he can _see_ it, suddenly, and it works, and he knows Shitty would have loved it, all of them drinking and singing and telling stories, when he would have hated the quiet of the funeral. It feels sort of like a fuck you to the people here, who didn’t know him and wanted to erase the best parts. “Ransom, Holster, you still know how to make tub juice?”

 

The small grins he gets tells him he’s made the right choice.

 

“To the Haus!” Holster yells, finally, finally, breaking the quiet, and then they’re gone, scattering to cars and heading towards the train. Will catches up with Whiskey, pulls him back from the crowd.

 

“Thanks.” He says. “We… we needed something, and none of us knew what.”

 

Whiskey shrugs. “No big deal. Seemed like it made sense. All the loud hockey players.”

 

“Still, thanks.” Will claps him on the shoulder and lets him catch up to Tango.

 

***

 

By the time the team gets back to the Haus, Ransom and Holster have already made a batch of tub juice. Soon enough, almost everyone is at least tipsy if not outright drunk, and Holster stands up and bellows. “Everyone! Now’s your chance. If you have a story to tell about our favorite mustachioed teammate, well, get in line, because Ransom’s first!” Will hears someone giggle.

 

Ransom stands up, stumbles, and braces himself on Holster’s shoulder. “My freshman year, I stole Shitty’s American flag vest.” Will hears Jack groan. “Shitty woke up and saw me sneaking out the door, and chased me – completely naked – across campus and into the Pond.” He pauses. “It was March. There were still _ice chunks_. Jack, captain extraordinaire, had to wade in and pull Shits off of me because he wasn’t listening to reason. That’s how much he loved that stupid vest. He refused to talk to me for weeks.” Ransom’s voice breaks “Then, I overhear him ripping into a senior who made some racist comment. He – he had my back, even when he was beyond pissed at me.”

 

“’Course he did.” Someone says as Holster pulls Ransom back down next to him.

 

They look around, see who’s going to be next. Jack gets up but keeps holding Bitty’s hand. “I’m – I’m still not sure how Shits and I became friends. He was loud, and cuddly, and naked way too often, and I was – am – none of those things. But still –” Jack stops, covers his face with his free hand, and starts to tremble, just slightly.

 

“Do you need a sec, sweetheart?” Bitty asks, reaching up to grab Jack’s wrist.

 

Jack shakes his head, breathes, and drops his hand. “He was my best friend. My first real friend. My only friend, for a while. We – we shared a bathroom for three years and I got weirdly used to him crawling into bed with me whenever he felt like it. I – The day before, I’d called him, just – just to catch up. He – he was complaining about torts.” His next breath comes out as a sob. “I miss him.”

 

He sits down, covers his eyes, and starts to cry, which starts a wave of sniffles all around. Will takes another swig of tub juice to try and wash away any of his tears. He can tell that Nursey, next to him, is about to stand, but Ollie beats him to it.

 

“I would like us all to remember,” He says, solemn and swaying, the drunkest out of all of them, “The time Shitty got so high he almost fell off the roof.”

 

There’s some watery laughter at that and Wicks pipes up with, “And that was after we got the lecture about reading room safety!”

 

Jack’s still crying, but Lardo smiles, a little, and they keep going, Bitty barely getting through his story of Shitty listening to him come out, Holster doing a dramatic reenactment of Ransom finding Shitty naked in his bed, story after story, memory after memory, some sad, some funny, most a strange mix of both, until they’re all crying and laughing through the tears and getting louder and drunker and it feels right, much more than the funeral did.

 

Lardo’s the last to speak, and she leads them in a toast, tells them to raise their solo cups for the ridiculous man who always believed in her.

 

“He…. he was my bro, and my person, and I… I can’t believe he’s really gone.” She lifts her cup, ignoring the tears slipping down her cheeks. “To Shits!”

 

“To Shits!” They all roar back, and drink, and if some of the calls come out muffled by sobs, no one’s going to mention it.

 

The group breaks up then, people coming together and breaking apart, Holster trying to lead several of the frogs in a drinking song, Bitty curled around Jack, Ollie and Wicks crying together, Ford listening to Chowder tell her another Shitty story, and Will looks around and realizes that he’s lost Nursey.

 

He finds him in the kitchen, arms around Lardo, who’s collapsed against his chest, fists raised. Will starts to back out of the room, but freezes when Lardo lets out a muffled scream and pounds a fist against Nursey’s breastbone.

 

“I hate him. I hate him I hate him I hate him.” She yells, as Nursey makes soothing noises. “He left me.” Abruptly, she starts to cry.

 

Will sneaks away, the alcohol churning in his gut, the tub juice too sickly sweet on his tongue.

 

Ford finds him a few minutes later, sitting on the stairs, head in his hands, and sits down next to him.

 

“Hey,” She asks, “How’re you doing?”

 

He sighs, looks at her. She’s been quietly, unobtrusively, doing her best to hold them all together, and maybe, just maybe, he can talk to her about the hollow shaking, the sick feeling in his gut. “Is it…is it worse, because he…because it was suicide?”

 

“Is what worse?”

 

Wills shrugs. “Everything? I…the guilt, and grief, and – and anger. This whole… thing – feels harder.”

 

She sighs, puts her chin in her hands, doesn’t look at him. “I don’t know. Maybe? It’s...” She takes her glasses off, scrubs at her eyes. “My Granny died, when I was in high school, and that was bad, but I’m not sure it was this bad. Or maybe it was just different. We’d – it wasn’t a surprise, and she’d had a good life, but it – it was still hard. This…. I didn’t know him well, but it was a – shock, I guess. To everyone.”

 

“Yeah.” Will says, wondering if even Lardo had any idea Shitty was struggling. “Yeah.”

 

“My mom always said that suicide was selfish. That it was one of the most selfish things you could do. I…I don’t know if I believe that, anymore, but…“ She stops.

 

“Lardo.” He says, completing the thought.

 

“Lardo.” She agrees. “What he – what this – has done to her is… horrible. To the rest of you, too, but Lardo… he was long-term for her, if not forever. She’s… lost, a little, now that he’s gone. I’m trying to convince her to move in with Ransom and Holster, just for a month or so.”

 

Will hopes she does. “That’d be good. They’d watch out for her.”

 

Ford lets out a sad half-laugh. “I don’t know what else to do.” She pauses. “Working in theatre, you get used to all these big emotions, the – the sweep of them. But it’s all contained. Fake. You – there’s a script. This is real. I – I don’t know what to do with real.”

 

He puts an arm around her. “You’re doing a pretty good job so far.”

 

“Am I?” She asks, looking at him for the first time, eyes tear-bright.

 

“Yeah.” He clears his throat, tries for a smile. “You’re managing the shit out of all of us.”

 

She smiles back, but it’s gone almost as quickly as it came. “I think it might get worse before it gets better.”

 

“This?” He asks, gesturing down towards the living room, the mourners in their revel. “I think you’re probably right.”

 

***

 

She is, and she isn’t. Two days later, Bitty breaks down in the kitchen over a cherry rhubarb pie, Shitty’s favorite flavor. Chowder remains quieter than usual. Nursey is extra chill until Will comes in one day to find him yelling and throwing things across their shared room. The circles under Jack’s eyes don’t fade as much as they should, and Ford calls Lardo every night to check in.

 

But things get easier, or maybe they just get better at forgetting, at navigating the holes Shitty left in their lives. Lardo, after two weeks, a shouted conversation with Ford, and an emotional Skype call with both Bitty and Jack, agrees to move in with Ransom and Holster. One day, Chowder runs in to the house yelling about the squirrels he saw on Lake Quad and forgets that he’s supposed to be solemn. Jack visits and tells a story about Shitty crawling into his bed after a kegster and they all laugh with only the smallest twinge of pain.

 

And Nursey? Nursey writes, filling pages and pages of fancy notebooks, sometimes crawling out of bed in the middle of the night muttering about an inspiration or an idea. Will has yet to go back to the top bunk, except on nights when one or the other of them is working really late, and he’s learned when to let Nursey go and when to pull him back into bed.

 

Soon enough, it’s spring, and Lardo invites them to an art show in Boston. They clean up as well as they can and Will keeps glancing at Nursey out of the corner of his eye because all he’s doing is fidgeting, any chill long gone, and he keeps brushing Will off whenever he asks what’s wrong.

 

The show’s in a warehouse downtown and they walk in to walls of riotous color, abstract canvases painted in dark tones, only pieces of objects half-visible – the suggestion of hands, the ends of hair, green eyes. Will isn’t a big fan of art, can’t say he gets it, but this is Lardo, and he’d do a lot more for her than just attend an art show. Despite his general disinterest, he finds himself drawn to one particular piece, a dark red canvas cut with jagged streaks of black and white, and glances at the title card only to do a double take when he sees it’s a poem. It turns out they’re all poems, and he recognizes a line or two and understands, now, Nursey’s nerves.

 

He walks around and reads them all, something rising, filling him as he does. His favorite poem, the one he comes back to again and again, matches with a tiny statue made of thin wire and white gauze, the edges stained with black ash. He wants to trace it with his fingers. It reads:

 

_My whole life felt like war,_

_Soot-stained in every crevice_

_And with no comrades to fight for_

_I dreamed of release, of the dying fall_

_Scratched fingernails against my skin_

_Bloody it began, bloody it could end._

_I met you on the field of battle,_

_Cleaner, I thought, and yet,_

_Willing, to fight with and for me,_

_Honey words glorious and strange._

_Surrender, you told me, was not an option,_

_And then you came in bearing white flags._

 

Will jumps when Nursey appears behind him, only realizing his fist is clenched when Nursey tries to link their fingers.

 

“It’s ok.” He whispers in Will’s ear. “We’re ok.”

 

Will takes a breath despite the storm.

**Author's Note:**

> TW: Shitty commits suicide. This story deals with the grief and fallout from that among the rest of the team.
> 
>  
> 
> If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please seek help. The National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255 and there are lots of other resources available as well.


End file.
